Water Safety "Training"

Also know as Vacation to the Beach!

· 6 hour bus ride to La Union including the “short cut” road ending & having to turn around, lots of climbing all over the bus & long talks with other Vs.

· Night swimming in the ocean upon arrival! Thanks to Colin for holding my pants…

· Sleeping on a miserable mattress

· Brief Water Safety Training PowerPoint including the accidental discharge of my CO2 cartridge to fill my life vest…

· Jumping into and out of a boat to demonstrate we can. End training.

· Swimming out to the others doing the above with Peyton and back to shore

· Lots and lots of H2O horseplay

· Throwing disc in the surf

· Finding other Euchre players! (card game)

· Playing Euchre.

· Nap in my Hammock!

· 2x2 Volleyball

· 30 min run down the beach at sunset passing all the fishing boats preparing to go out for the night.

· Attempting to sleep in my hammock but driven back to the poor mattress by the mosquitoes.

· Taking off my chacos day one and never putting them back on!

· Having my abandoned chacos wander off.

Humility through Laundry

I think every high ranking official & self-important business person; everybody who hasn’t done their own laundry in years; heck, even all of us who DO do our own laundry, but with a washing machine…
I think all of us should have the experience of hand washing our own underwear squatting down in the back of the house, hand pumping your own water and having your 11 & 15 year old female cousins help. & they can do this much better than I can…

Relationships

Don’t forget to cultivate all the various relationships around you. Today, befriending and becoming family with Tin Tin & Tiger, the family dogs, really solidified. Not only does tiger not try and eat me when I startle him in the middle of the night, today he decided to follow me to class! Usually he isn’t let out of the compound, but for some reason today he was outside & decided to go on an adventure with me to class. He picked a good day for it too. I guess Matt had an allergic reaction to something and his lips have swollen up a bit and are itching so Manang Uzi was taking care of him this morning. So for the first part of class she left notes for the rest of us with the task of going to talk with the LGU breeding center next door. So after walking the 2.5 km to class, Jackson, Tiger and I trekked next door & checked out the center including their 600 lb boar they use for artificial insemination and their methane powered range top. Tiger just sat under the table while we chatted with the people who work there learning a little more about their operation. Then we got to hike the 2 km back into town to the market & talk with a store owner for a little “community interaction” before heading back out to the Livelihood Center to have formal class. Tiger just ranges out in front as I walk occasionally stopping in some shade to wait for me to catch up & then he just lies down on the floor whenever I stop to talk to people & during class! Great dog.

I forgot how much I feed off of simple interactions with people (and animals). The little head nods & smiles you can exchange while walking around, or just chatting with the store clerk for a bit while drinking a coke. Simply acknowledging the existence of the people around you goes such a long way.

Existential Musings

The gray twilight of morning with my host Mom sweeping outside my room & the world slowly turning.
04.27.04

It’s the ability to wrap yourself in a cocoon of your own hopes, dreams & ambitions, held tightly closed by circumstance & discipline that can elicit true growth in that direction. The longer you can stay there the more the world will allow you the change. (and the more you strengthen your soul, the powers of your mind, the less you really care what “the world” thinks.) It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the world and our place in it and then to become lost and wandering in it, trying to help with what feeble skills and powers one has developed, by chance, along the way. The deeper you burrow into your soul and forget about the immensity of the world, the immensity of duty, the immensity of pain, sorrow & suffering, the immensity of the love held, shown & sacrificed the more you can train, the more you can grow and the more focused you can become. & you can emerge more able to face the immensities of life with poise, grace & purpose. The greater the impact you can make.

For all change must start from within. Do you want to change the world? Start with yourself. Until you begin to figure you out & what you really stand for & might want to believe in enough to fight for don’t come talking to me about me.

Or the world, or our place in it, or duty, or love, or your fleeting ephemeral dreams and ambitions. Don’t bother me with all that for I am trying to develop my own foundations and a place to actually stand. Youthful exuberance is fine and dandy, but only if your erratic passions drive you into your own cocoon.

If you want to change the world. If you want to really engage in my world. Start with here.

Mind. Body. Soul.

05.15.05

Lost & Wandering

And as I read Thomas Merton’s autobiography a month later I criticize him for the same desire to wrap himself in the safety of his own cocoon within the walls of a monastery. Maybe the difference is he has yet to have a desire to return to and engage in the world after his transformation. But he has the advantage of a place to withdraw into. He has a tradition, a set of beliefs, and a community to provide support, direction and validity to his chosen way of life. What beliefs, desires and ambitions am I to wrap myself in? What direction to I want to develop in? What do I really believe in? I fight with what skills I have gained, through chance, and I always seek to acquire more, but I do not yet know what foundation I want to rest them on. I do not know from what reality I want to approach the world. And therefore I still do not really know what direction to travel in. I do not have peace of mind. I do not have discipline of body or soul. I do not have poise, grace or purpose. I just flail at the injustices in the world with a mixture of faith, love, rage and determination. For the love of all that is Holy, I do not want to create another reality, another set of beliefs and values in a world that has so many. I just want to find a community I can believe in. I want to find a mentor I can follow. A place I can call home. But I have yet to find a tradition that I agree with, that I can support, that I can throw myself into with the reckless abandon and faith shown by Thomas Merton. So I am still lost and wandering on the other side of the world with no real idea of what I am searching for or where I am going.

Discipline - Body & Reflecting Back

Reflecting Back
05.14.05

Looking back at these next two posts and the thoughts they have brought back to me as I type them I find it interesting to reflect briefly on the environment from which they come. In-between our Hub sites life has fallen into a fairly solitary routine. During these posts anyway - getting up early in the morning to go running, then showering. Afterwards I ate breakfast with Dad with CNN in the background discussing random current events or life in the Philippines. From there it is off to class to attempt to get some worthwhile Ilokono out of our time with our teacher. Even class has become each of us in our own minds working through the language. We come from such different backgrounds and places that what we need to work on and learn is very different from each other. Class has not been formed into much of a community. From the end of class, at noon, the day is our own to do with as we please. I live about two klicks (km) from the nearest other trainee, so I also don’t see them much outside of class, partly by the distance, partly by choice. This provides an extraordinary amount of unstructured time to someone used to the college life. We don’t even get homework from class.

For me, this has moved my mind to an intense inward focus. Trying to decipher the balances that I need to be happy and fulfilled from day to day. Figuring out what I need to be able to bounce out of bed in the morning happy and excited to face the day. Some days go well, others are more difficult. Its balancing out the needs of Mind, Body & Soul and the delicate interplay and interdependence of the three. Its figuring out what goals I can pursue and how to follow so many of them concurrently. If I do nothing else with my two years here than get closer to finding that balance my time will have been well spent.

04.26.05

Discipline - Body

The very best you can do in season is to keep up with the competition. It’s the off season that really makes the athlete. Everyone works hard in season. Anyone can work hard in season when they are working with their teammates, the goals are easily visible and they can feel the pressure of their competition. It takes a real athlete to take it out of season and to have the strength of mind and depth of character to do it alone if that is what’s required of the moment. Its every day you get off your ass while everyone else rests on their laurels that makes the difference between first and the rest, between making that layout D and eating dirt.

I’ll never be able to push my body as hard alone as I can with a team, but that’s not what matters. It’s the fact that I push my body today & again tomorrow & again the day after that, that matters. It’s a balancing act between making this moment, in work out, supreme in order to pour your whole being into that workout & the realization right afterwards that some days will not go as well as others & the only important thing is that you tried & that you’ll hit it again tomorrow.

Word by Word

The simplest little phrases can make all the difference in the world. My host mother speaks much better English than I speak Ilokono, but her English is still somewhere shy of fluent. Yesterday I was sitting around with some of my teenage cousins & I learned the affix to signify “every” & so I can now way “every morning,” “every evening,” etc. Not terribly exciting but a step none the less. So today when my host mother was chiding me, in English, for not hanging up my sweaty sheets in the morning so they dry (& here she comes chiding me some more :op) I was able to ask here in my broken Ilokono if she meant that she wanted me to hang them up “intono bimegat?” “every morning?” & suddenly she spouts off in a string of Ilokono in which I caught about two words. She’s much more comfortable in Ilokono but does an amazing job working through in English! Times like this really emphasis the importance of language here. Mom and I can communicate in English, but the more I speak her language the better our relationship gets.

Its also fun to watch & participate in this balancing act between my mother and I and our cultures. For some things she really does need to show me the basics because of cultural & climate differences, such as hanging up my sheets. & then there are just the cultural differences that means I do things differently than they do and that everything will be alright in the end. Such as today when I tied my wet, sweaty shirt around my head to keep the sweat out of my eyes after I worked out which Mom thinks will give me a headache. Or her insistence on waiting awhile before showering after being all hot and sweaty. I’m still not exactly sure what the concern is there besides “getting sick,” nor am I sure of its validity but no harm in waiting a bit and it sure makes Mom happier. The more and more comfortable I become in these surroundings though the more I am able to assert some of my own identity and ways of doing things that might be different. Its just a matter of figuring out where the lines are and what is acceptable, if different, and what might actually offend.

Climbing & Clothes

The acacia tree, according to my Dad, is a very important part of life & the economy here in Ifugao. It’s a large relatively soft wood tree that is used in all of the wood carvings that this region is known for. The roots are even used & turned into tables, benches and chairs. Just don’t try and climb one of them…

I’m feeling a bit of rock climbing withdrawal & combined that with a natural desire to go up, and find the highest place around – I like to climb trees. That and I had a lot on my mind and up tends to be the most solitary place around too. Its hard to be bothered when nobody can actually get to you, if they even see you in the first place. People don’t tend to look up. But I guess the acacia tree is a poor choice. It may be big but my Dad says the branches are fairly brittle and so once I managed to get up the first bit and actually into the tree it seemed the whole family turned out to shoe me down! Instead of climbing my Dad decided it was a good time to show me how to do my laundry. :op Anything, I guess, to keep the crazy American out of the trees…

(and now all the small, new, lower branches that I had used to climb up are gone. Guess nobody wanted my cousins to try and follow suit. Gotta remember that whole role model gig.)

Reality Check

I need to try & capture & remember that starry-eyed feeling that sets in when absolutely everything is new, the place where all of this has started. It so quickly fades as we order the world around us, correctly or not, into a workable view of reality. We make associations with the more familiar surroundings of back home, learn new location names & kinds of food & the occasional new action. But catching a jeepney is much the same as hailing a cab, you just have to learn the difference in paying for the first opposed to the second (& both would be new to this Midwest boy anyway.) Flushing with a bucket & balance are the only real differences in using a squat toilet & bucket showers are kind of fun once you get the hang of it. Its that overwhelming feeling of complete NEWNESS that is so special, so fleeting, so humbling & so easily forgotten. Go to a new job in the states, or move to a new city & the feelings are the same, only different in magnitude & duration. There are simply less new experiences (people, layout, the occasional acronym & slang) & the associations are made quicker (same culture & when it gets down to it, an office is still an office). But try that feeling for a week, two, longer. That’s the best comparison I can make to what life here is like. But now here I sit in the bake shop looking out the window at the Lamut Town Hall eating Halo Halo (shaved ice & a bunch of sweets in the bottom) & sure I might have ordered it wrong (I’m not really exactly sure how that was supposed to work) but I’m here, all by myself, working, writing & eating Halo Halo. Happy. Another successful transfer of reality. Its not quite a coffee shop, but it will work. Maybe cooking will be next, not that there was much to transfer in the 1^st place… :op

Taste of Life

When every single experience is a new experience life is so different. The days seem so long because there is so much to learn and so much to do.

A walk to the store is intimidating & wondrous. Trying to find toothpaste; a challenge & then what kind do you get? Of course your usual kind isn’t here.

The old lady begging to the market who follows the white boy because his skin color is a sign of money. What do you do? What do you say with your handful of Ilokono words?

Buying mangos at the market when you have no idea how much they should cost or how such an exchange is supposed to go. And how do you express gratitude when the lady gives you the difference in change that neither of you could make?

And life is so exhilarating because of it all! So many new challenges to overcome, even the small ones can fill you with joy. A text from your host brother acknowledging you’ll be home late, referring to you as “Kuya”, older brother. Respect. Family.

Looking forward to navigating an early morning jeepney ride home alone & trying to find the bank along the way.

And so many experiences that I have no idea where to even begin to look for them. How do I buy a hat? And can I find a classic Vietnamese peasant style one? How about a mulong? Or the shirt they wear here for formal occasions? How do I get it tailor made? I suppose these all will come with time, but the anticipation of them brings excitement enough for now. I just need to keep my ear to the ground and see what turns up. For now I have toothpaste & some mangos & right now that is plenty of excitement for me!

Do Not Go Quietly Unto Your Grave

“Do Not Go Quietly Unto Your Grave.”
~Morphine

Philippines Play List:

Willing to Fight, Ani DiFranco
Stand, Blues Traveler
The Canoe Song, Peter Mayer
Thin Line, Jurrasic Five
One More Circle, Peter Mayer
Slow Dance, Jermey Erickson
Names and Dates and Times, Ani DiFranco
Do Not Go Quietly Unto Your Grave, Morphine
Evolve, Ani DiFranco
The Process, Quasi Nada

Way of Life, Dead Prez
Pardon Me, Incubus

Goodbyes & Beginnings & Other Cliches

Day 3 of Hub II

I knew there would be a lot of these with this trip, but I definitely did not think they would start this quickly. Jen leaves today for a week of vacation & diving in Palawan & then she heads home to eventually end up with what appears to be a very cool job on Catalina Island with Cal State University. I will definitely miss her, though not all bad in her leaving. Its nice to be set free from those who are helping you “grow up” into a new life. Still we have become fairly good friends while she’s been here. Its awesome to be allowed into someone else’s world like that. Sharing her concerns and thoughts about going back to the states. An advanced glimpse of the roller coaster ride of leaving this place. Still not sure how I became a part of her support structure on this one, but I’m glad I could be. She’s helped me out a lot through this first bit as well. A person to talk to and to get a look at what life will be like as a Volunteer and a person to bounce all those petty concerns off of as they come up. And of course the added bonus of knowing a staff person is always helpful for getting a closer look at how things are run. All in all I’m glad to see her leave. She ahs an awesome life ahead of her and its time for her to get moving again. Meantime, I’m back to trying to learn another language and enjoy life here.

It also does wonders for the mind to know exactly where you will be spending the next two years. Everything has become is so much sharper focus now that I know I’ll be heading to Mayoyao, Ifugao!! According to Tom one of the top three sought after volunteer posts along with Palawan and Segada. Regardless I’ll be up in the Mountains literally living among the rice terraces! The LGU (Local Government Unit) specifically request a male volunteer in part because of all the anticipated hiking the post will require and also because of concerns with suitors, but I’ll not have to worry about that. There is also a water project already started that I will be able to assist with and the tourist pamphlet mentions native houses made with no metal, probably the first of its kind. Doesn’t get much better than all of this in my book!! Still not a whole lot of info though, working off of that pamphlet and the Volunteer request form. But as it goes, now everything can finally begin to feel real. I can start to conceptualize my life for these two years and really be able to use that to dig into this language. Here we go!

Address!

And I actually have an address here now. Well, I've had it for awhile I was just slow in getting it to y'all. Enjoy!

George Norris
U.S. Peace Corps, PNB Financial Building 6th Floor Bayside
Diosdado Macapagal Ave.
1308 Pasay City, Manila Philippines

Pancakes & Such Things

1^st Thought: 4pm Tuesday we find out our site placements!!

2^nd Thought: Since the Lamut crew is about an hour away we returned to NVSU this evening, we start another hub tomorrow. I went to the roof to find some solitude and to be able to write and I also ended up finding Manang Uzi doing some laundry. We just chatted for about a half hour. Looks like the third party system worked out alright, though she would have preferred to have me approach her directly. As it goes, I guess next week starts “Learner Direct” training and it looks like I’ll get some more independent study time with some one on one. We’ll see how that goes. Regardless it was great to chat with Manang Uzi outside of class. She’s a great character! I hope class improves though.

It gets dark here fast though… reading by headlight again!

Adventures in Food: I cooked pancakes for my family this morning. Not the best pancakes I’ve ever made, by far, but they were definitely edible & they were really just a medium to eat the maple syrup I brought from MN for them anyway. But the poor choice was the “cultural exchange” of serving them hot. That is, in my house anyway, pancakes are the be eaten hot, as soon off the pan as possible which mean everyone eats while the cook cooks. Unfortunately I had a small pan that could only run one pancake at a time and the cooking went very slowly. That and I take it everyone should eat at the same time here, and generally men don’t cook anyway, so that whole gig ended in a bunch of awkwardness that we all managed to survive just fine. It’s the thought that counts right? It was fun anyway, & at least I was allowed to cook something! I also learned how to do dishes today both with and without running water. Nothing novel in the first case, the usual variations that comes from household to household just like in the States but it was interesting to see how it is done with water conservation being a top priority. Even here, with plenty of water, the dish water is still used to water plants, the main difference without running water is another basin and conserving as much as possible. Good things to learn and another reason why its great to have Jeff home again.

As it looks though, that will not be the case much longer. His Coast Guard gig went really well and he is now one of the chosen ten, out of approximately 100 applicants, who are being rushed through the process for a April 25^th training leave date. The usual wait for a spot is 1-2 years! I guess it had something to do with someone retiring from our region (CAR) and needing more recruits from that region to fill some quotas…I’m not really sure exactly what happened but good for Jeff! All he has to do now is pass the medical and neurological screening. I’ll miss him though, the learning will definitely slow down a bit. He has been a great teacher and generally just a lot of fun to hang out with. I wish him luck though!

I also went to a Baptism today! Crazy full days… (I also took Bembol “running” with me this morning, man is he in poor shape :op We managed to make it 1000m with only stopping twice though…). (I’m also really glad the bugs don’t swarm my headlight like they do that spotlight over there, at first glance I thought it was sparks coming out from a fire…) But the Baptism…

It appears to be essentially a big party thought definitely segregate by gender and age. Mostly of the females and children (and myself!) are in the house while the men are standing around in what I presume to be one of the drinking circles everyone keeps going on about. There were also a few men inside the house with me though. I’m still not sure why, but the protestant minister’s husband was among them and a few older gentlemen. Maybe they don’t drink, not sure. I also found out my dad is a member of the Knights of Columbus by the shirt he was wearing. A Catholic foundation that I actually don’t know all that much about but they are based out of New Haven CT!! Go Kitty! Maybe a new vocational calling? :op And with that, I am being called away to dinner. Full day indeed.

Afternoon Musings

The food here, so far has been wonderful & way too plentiful. I am still very excited for my host family which is quite large & has definitely taken me in. This afternoon we went out to the family farm and I met a bunch of cousins who are in town for the festivities of the Barangay Founding Day. This included a talent show of some kind, lots of food and a beauty pageant that went on the day before we arrived and which one of my cousins won. From what I hear this country is very fond of beauty pageants. That should be interesting. I also met my mother’s the eldest sister who lives out on the family farm and is quite a wonderful person. I look forward to talking with her more. Quite the day, I got laughed at this morning for peeling my sinkama away from myself and I guess not very well at that. From talking to Jen, an exiting PCV who is helping with training, where she was they teased her for peeling towards herself. I guess it all depends on where you are. I also managed to get thrashed three or four times in a row playing chess with Bembol, my 12 year old cousin. Humbling indeed. Looks like everyone has taken to teaching the American too! Jeff, my host brother who is my age, keeps pointing out trees and giving me basic words that I’m never going to remember. I hope I can at least keep up some. I think some of the girls are going to start teaching me to cook next weekend as well. Oh & don’t forget about the ants that live & build nests way up in trees. Think before you climb. Though we will be eating some of those ant eggs sometime later…

Note To Self

If life ever begins to pale & I find myself unable to enjoy things, try going to another culture & learning a new lifestyle. Knowledge is territorial as one of the first speakers at Island Cove pointed out with a story. He hiked umpteen hours to the remote village where one of his students was the leader and lived with them for three months. After that time the leader attempted to find a polite way to tell him he was the most ignorant man he had ever met.
Knowledge is territorial and relearning everything can be a bit of a horrible & awkward for the first few days but things will hopefully settle down soon. The feeling of not being able to do anything on your own time table because you don’t know the rules yet or even how to do it. Nothing is routine anymore. There are not any habits or patterns right off, all of them have to be adjusted to a new place. Some adjust easier than others; brushing your teeth, washing your hands, dishes (if anyone will ever let me get anywhere near them). Others have to, at least in part, be re-invented and practiced until route, showering with a bucket, eating with only a spoon, and a fork that is only really used to shovel food onto the spoon, setting up a mosquito net before bed.
But you can get a surprising & wonderful sense of accomplishment showering successfully with a bucket & ladle! Or using a squat toilet for the first time, even if Momma did have to show me how to properly flush it. Luckily she did not demonstrate the rest… It’s a great feeling to acclimate to somewhere new. You have to pay attention and exist in the moment because all the moments are new and it takes some thought to do what used to be so mindless and mundane. Now I just need to get Momma to calm down & relax a bit. She’s currently spoiling me rotten, I just wish I knew by how much. Welcome to ASP all over again, but where I don’t speak the language.

Host Family & Home!

Home at last. & what a home it is! My host family is awesome, at least as far as I can tell so far. I’ve been here maybe, three hours.J Mom, Sanja Pasay-an, picked me up at Nueva Vizcaya University where we have been staying & as a cluster we rode the 45 minute Jeepney trip to Lamut which is located just across the border in the province of Ifugao. Momma’s English is fair. She can speak quite well, but lacks confidence sometimes. I can’t wait to be able to reciprocate with my own miserable attempts at Ilokono in the next few weeks. Dad, who I haven’t quite got his 1^st name yet, is great! Great English, a wealth of info & he loves to talk & teach what he knows. I’ve already got a complete geography lesson & plenty more. He dove right into some Ilokono as well. I’ll be hard pressed to absorb all the info he’s tossing around. Mom is originally from Lamut & Dad was born in the Mountain Province (North and East of here). They met at college in Bagio City where they both were studying agriculture. Mom runs a sari sari store that sits along the street right in front of the house conveniently located across from the school (i.e., big field!). Dad works or the Ag division of the Municipality which has six workers total and works with the surrounding four barangays. I think he said there are 18 total barangays in the Municipality of Lamut with a total population of around 18.000 people. 2,000 or so are located in publacions East and West, where the Municipal Hall is. (East & West because more barangays equals more money from the Government.) A word on government organization: From the top down there is the National Government, then a Regional government that appears to be mostly administrative and below that are the Provinces. The provincial government is mainly responsible for direction and planning and then it becomes up to the individual Municipalities to carry out the plan. There are a total of 11 Municipalities in Ifugao. These are further broken up into Barangay which is the rough equivalent of a town. I’m sure there will be much more on this later.

My room is great as well! I have a bunk bed, a small table & a cool little cabinet gig to put my clothes in. On top of that there is a ante room/porch idea in front with my own door to the outside of the house. Life is good. I can’t wait to make this place feel even more like home! Life is definitely good.

Evolution of the Slow

Americans are fast people. We don’t pause to listen & tend to just charge on in the direction of our dreams (or at least the direction we were most recently facing…) At least that’s the stereotype. At least that’s most of us Trainees. I am even more thankful now for the lessons I’ve learned in rural Appalachia. I finally understand what they must of thought of me. Never pausing long enough for them to give a response or to voice a thought. Never realizing that they hadn’t responded and might have had something extremely important to say.

Multiple times now this has happened to me here. Shopping for a cell phone, getting a trike ride & now I’m amazed at exactly how much it bugs me. I want to handle my social interactions at a much more relaxed pace & that pace has served me quite well and just so happens to include the person I’m talking to and pauses to make allowances for (or figure out) whatever pace they feel like going at. All of this reminds me very strongly of LeEta, the secretary at Scott County, TN High School and a good friend of mine during my summer there. Sit & listen & its amazing what you can learn. This is my main asset for PC service & it has served me well so far with other Trainees. Take Michael. At face value he really is a grumpy, withdrawn old man a lot of the time. But he has, for him, good reason. This is his 4^th time through all of this training and his 3^rd time to the Philippines. To top it off, he’s getting screwed on his site placement. They want him to learn another language instead of using the Tagalog he already knows. But you don’t know any of this unless you listen to him and you could miss the way he lights up and his eyes glow when he answers all of our nervous questions about what life is like. Sit & listen & you learn. Be confident yourself, in who you are & when you have nothing to prove to the person sitting across from you it becomes so much easier to listen & only then do you learn.

I know people. Everything else will come from that.

Rash #1

I didn’t really notice how miserable and out of it I really was until I finally started to feel better. I picked up some cold symptoms in Manila and they got worse at site. Mostly just a stuffy nose and a bit of a cough, but the worst of it was the feeling like cotton had been stuffed into my brain. I had been making it through the sessions all right, though a few my hand. Later on the doctor told me they thought it was a coach roach, but whatever it was, it bite me on the knuckle of the littler finger on my right hand. The bite itself wasn’t bad, just another bug bite, but over the next few days the redness started to swell in a line down to my wrist. People started to notice because I circled it to see if it was going to continue to spread. Combined that with the mosquito bite on my leg that swelled up to the circumference of a sand dollar and I was just a barrel of fun. Next thing I know I wake up in the morning to one of the PCVs helping out with the Hub Site coming by to check on my hand and off I go to the hospital to get it checked out. One of my site mates was already there feeling people noticed the less than usual spunk. What tipped the scale though, was the odd bite on much worse than myself, so I just hopped on down with the vehicle going to check on her. It really is amazing what anti-biotic can do for you. Those and an allergy medication and I’m definitely feeling a lot better, the contrast is remarkable. It feels good to be up to my old tricks again! Strange skin rash #1. I’m sure there will be plenty more to come.

Mountains & the Divine

I’ve never been able to find God, the Divine, very well in an urban setting. I think its at least in part because everything, literally EVERYTHING around you has been created and prefabricated by humans. And when it comes to nature, often prefabed poorly. Nature has its own order & its not straight lines or squares. Its different for me in the Mountains. Sitting in this valley, on top of a small hill, on top of the NVSU dormitory building where we are staying, I can see the mountains in the distance on all sides soaring into the skies. Majestic, Bold, Old, Patient, Proud. They will be here long after humans no longer walk these roads and they were here long before we built them. Even looking at the destruction & deforestation evident on the mountain sides I can still feel their power & somehow it still gives me hope.

Even the view closer to our building is an amazing sight. Looking out over the town from atop our hill the view is surreal & very stereotypically Peace Corps. The valley floor is flat for miles around & just down the hill from the University are rice fields with the town of Bayombong spreading out beyond. Humankind is good from some things though. Only two pills into my round of anti-biotics and I feel one hundred times better.

Host family stays start in two days. I can’t wait. Moral is high again, now if I could just figure out how to text the States…

Mirienda

If I needed any more reason to know I belong in this country Mirienda would be the one. Besides breakfast, lunch and dinner they stop twice a day at 10 am & 3 pm to eat a snack called Mirienda. Its not that I like eating all that much, its that fact that I graze and have never managed to quite get the whole three meals a day idea down. Now life stops 5 times a day for food. It feels like your eating all the time but its still small amounts. Perfect for a grazer like myself!

~ghn

Mountains.

I’m amazed at the strong emotional reaction that mere terrain can elicit in me. Over the years I have formed such a strong connection between myself, service and the mountains. I was born in the mountains, Pittsburgh, PA, the foothills of the Appalachians. I’ve always claimed its in my blood, even if I did spend my “formative years” in the flatlands of Iowa. Once again that fact has been proven to me.

Today we have split the large group up into four “Hub Sties," one heading to each major region we will be working in: Northern and Southern Luzon, and Eastern and Western Visayas. So my group got the joy of taking the 8 hour bus ride to Northern Luzon, ending up in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. This is not the ending destination though. From here we split up into 5 “Cluster Sites” which will truly be home for the next two months. These sites consist of approximately 4 volunteers and our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator). Here we stay with host families and have language lessons every morning from 8-12. In the afternoons we are free to explore the community, hang out with our host family and take naps! Every 7-10 days everyone returns to the Hub Site for further training as a large group. But for the next three days we will be in Bayombong having sessions covering all kinds of topics, from Community Entry tools to cultural sensitivity. Tomorrow (Friday the 8th) they will tell us our cluster sites and the people we will be spending the next two months living and learning with.

Right now though, I’m still overawed by the mountains. On the way up we stopped at a look out point situated at the highest spot in the province. The view was breathtaking, it wasn’t the physical beauty that brought me to tears, it was a feeling of being home. Every time I’ve gone back to the mountains I have been working with the Appalachia Service Project (ASP, www.asphome.org) in various parts of rural Appalachia. I’ve spent three summers there becoming part of amazing, loving communities that took us in and made us one of their own and at the end of the season had to leave. I’m reminded of all the awe inspiring people I have met and worked with, both the families we served and the volunteers that came to work. And here I am once again, Mind, Body & Soul reminded of all the other mountains I’ve inhabited, and all the people who have given so much of themselves to get me to where I am today. Today I am ready to immerse myself in yet another place, this time half way around the world.

~ghn

In The Beginning...

Very similiar to how a single conversation can be so uplifting I am surprised by exactly how excited I can get at the sight of tofu and spices. Today for breakfast I had something called “Congee” which is essentially rice pudding/soup with a few blocks of tofu, some ginger, garlic & green onions mixed in. It’s the 1st time I felt totally satisfied with a meal. I’m currently still eating vegetarian. From talking to another volunteer, Michael, who has been in the Philippines with the Peace Corps before, it is possible if difficult to remain vegetarian here. I still wonder if I really want to make that a priority or not. I lean towards no, but for the time being its definitely possible.

The flight was exactly what can be expected for such endeavors. Door to door it took us a touch over 24 hours to make it to our beds. We had a quick layover outside Tokyo but other than that it was mostly spent on a plane. Exciting, I can assure you. We are staying at an “Island Resort and Leisure Park” outside of Manila. I suppose it’s a nice way of beginning to adjust to the new culture but its definitely mitigates the feeling of actually being in country. All of our training sessions are in the compound and I’ve only managed to venture out twice now by Jeepney to the mall for some email access. Jeepneys are pretty cool though. They are old US military vehicles that have turned into the main form of public transportation here and are all decked out in individual style with bright colors and pictures. It reminded me quite a bit of the buses from Acapulco if you are familiar with them. We will be staying here through Sunday as a large group getting the overall orientation to PCP. Its nice to start digging in, but once again part of me is definitely excited to move on. Next we break down into four groups and start our Community Based Training. CBT is centered around four Hub Sites where we will meet for a few days every 7-10 days as a group for some technical training and other sessions. The rest of the time we are in small Clusters of 3-5 volunteers and our Language and Culture Facilitator in Home Stays in small communities around the Hub Site. Here is where we get to truly dig into what our life will be like for the next two years.

I had my cite placement interview with Joe today. Joe is the Host Country National who is overall in charge of my program. He interview was short and sweet mainly dealing with my technical skills (can you do plumbing? Have you mixed concrete?), how remote of a location I would like (very remote!) and my ability to handle alcohol and peer pressure to drink. I felt that it went well and I get the impression that I’ll probably be dealing first hand with the male gin drinking circles that are mentioned in much of the literature as social gatherings. It was definitely a very short interview but I’m not all that worried about where I am placed. It was a good first meeting with Joe and I look forward to working with him more in the future. He also told me, because all of the Wat/San people will be there, that our Hub Site will be in Northern Luzon, in the mountains! That also pegs my language as Ilokono. From talking to the few volunteers who are just completing their service and are helping out it sounds like a great place with a lot of indigenous culture still intacted. I am definitely excited. The only concern I voiced to Joe was my age, specifically how young I look. Joe’s response was that I look very mature for my age which was a nice compliment and helped a little on that front. (Re-enforced by the fellow volunteer who thought I was 24-25!!) I fell great so far and nothing but good things to come.